A second volume of discourses or sermons on several scriptures

First,¹ Because in all such Sins there is a most horrid Contempt of the Authority & Sovereignty of the great God: And what higher Presumption can there be, than for vile Worms to set at nought the Authority of that God at whose Frown Heaven, ⟨p. 162⟩and Hell, and Earth tremble. The Voice of Conscience rightly informed by the Scripture, it is the Voice of God himself; it is God speaking in a man's Bowels, and whispering to a man's very Heart. As Moses was the Interpreter betwixt God and the Israelites, so Conscience is the Interpreter betwixt God and us. Why now, would it not have been, think you, a most desperate Presumption, and a most daring Affront against the Majesty and Sovereignty of God, if while he was with his own voice pronouncing the Ten Commandments with Thundering, and Lightening, and Earth-quake from Mount Sinai, at the same time the Israelites to have been notoriously breaking and sinning against every one of those Commandments, as he spake them. Truly, though now God delivers his Will and Commands to us, not immediately by his own mouth, as then he did, but by Conscience his Interpreter, yet while we know that Conscience speaks to us in the Name of God, it is as much fearful Presumption for us to slight the voice of Conscience, as if we should slight the voice of God himself speaking from heaven immediately to us. And that's the first Thing.

1. 11. It is a Contempt of the Authority of God.

Secondly,¹ By sinning against our Consciences, and against our Convictions, we make it very evident that we stand in no awe or dread of any such thing as Hell and eternal Damnation is, and is not that Boldness? Is not that Presumption? You scorn possibly to be such puling, whimpering Sinners as to be affrighted with such Bug-bears as everlasting Torments, and everlasting Wrath and Vengeance is; you know the Wages of Sin is Death, and that the Ways you take, lead down to the Chambers of Destruction; and yet though God and Devil stand in the way you will through: Are not these, think you, bold and presumptuous Sinners, that will go on in Sin, though Hell-Fire flashes in their Faces, who, though God should cleave the Ground upon which they walk, and through that Chink should give them a view of Hell; though they should see the Damned tumbling up and down in those Torments, and hear their Yellings and Shriekings, and Roarings; yea, though God should point them out a place in Hell, and tell them, Look, Sinner, yonder is a Place kept void, and heated from the beginning of the World for thee;